Curious Christian

Over lunch the other day I was browsing through “What St Paul Really Said,” by N T Wright, when I came across an awesome bit he wrote on the doctrine of Justification:

Galatians 2 offers the first great exposition of justification in Paul. In that chapter, the nub of the issue was the question, who are Christians allowed to sit down and eat with? For Paul, that was the question of whether Jewish Christians were allowed to eat with Gentile Christians. Many Christians, both in the Reformation and in the counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of ‘Justification’ as central to their debates, and by supposing that it described the system by which people attained salvation. They have turned the doctrine into its opposite. Justification declares that all who believe in Jesus Christ belong at the same table, no matter what their cultural or racial differences (and, let’s face it, a good many denominational distinctions, and indeed distinctions within a single denomination, boil down more to culture than doctrine). Because what matters is believing in Jesus, detailed agreement on justification, properly conceived, isn’t the thing which should determine eucharistic fellowship. If Christians could only get this right, they would find that not only would they be believing the gospel, they would be practicing it; and that is the best basis for proclaiming it.

There follows from this a vital and liberating point, which I first met in the works of the great Anglican divine Richard Hooker, an for which I shall always be grateful. One is not justified by faith in justification by faith. One is justified by faith by believing in Jesus. It follows quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don’t know they are justified by faith. The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn’t realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well. As Hooker said, many pre-Reformation folk were in fact justified by faith, because they believed in Jesus, even though, not knowing about or believing in justification by faith, they lacked assurance, and then sought to fill this vacuum in other ways. Many Christians today may not be very clear about the niceties of doctrine; but, however inarticulately, they hold on to Jesus; and, according to Paul’s teaching, they are therefore justified by faith. They are constituted as members of the family. They must be treated as such. This is not to say, of course, that justification is an unimportant or inessential doctrine. Far from it. A church that does not grasp it and teach it is heading for trouble. It is to say that the doctrine of justification itself points away from itself. Believing in Jesus – believing that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead – is what counts.

I had one of those moments of recognition, which happen so wonderfully frequently with this guy, in which I found him articulating my own thought trails far more profoundly and succinctly than I ever could.

Not sure if it has the same impact on you, but I’d be interested in your response.